cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/38188482
Tech vendors promised personalized, frictionless learning. What American schools got instead was mind-numbing, data-hungry junk software that devalues teachers and shortchanges students. A growing movement, led by alarmed parents, is saying enough.
Technology’s allure is always future oriented: Personal computing was going to supercharge productivity; social media and smartphones would strengthen interpersonal connections; and now AI will streamline the world of work. And for three-quarters of a century, education technology vendors have promised to optimize student learning and eliminate the busywork of teaching. But as Charles Logan, T. Philip Nichols, and Antero Garcia recently argued in Kappan, “the future they’re selling has not arrived — and perhaps it never will. But de-skilling, surveillance, and extraction — all of that is happening now, in our classrooms, today.”
Like healthcare, education and open source tech is a good pairing, as long as the tech adds, not replaces
That’s the key: look at where we were, look at where we’re going, is this the kind of progress we want?
Answer, of course, depends on who “we” includes.
Business has been shown to not care about long term implications, as such they should be treated as the fox outside the henhouse - a natural occurrence, but not one to be trusted - with anything.